A New Song for River
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: An alternate take on River Song's mysterious past, and how she came to know, love, and kill the Doctor. Rated "Mature" for coarse language in select chapters.
1. Part 1

Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all.

_River stops her recitation, her breath halting in her throat—or rather, binary language sending signals across a motherboard tell her consciousness that that is happening, flashing imaginary synapses in her electronic brain. It is fairly convincing, almost mistakable for the real thing, but that just makes River even angrier._

_He just couldn't do it, could he? Couldn't possibly let her die, certainly couldn't let her death have meaning. Couldn't let her rest._

_She shakes her head. That impossible man._

_River looks down on the children slumbering in their beds, all of them snug in their covers like little piggies in blankets. Or perhaps that is just River's stomach rumbling, or perhaps it is just the memory of it—with a pang, River realizes she will never eat again, not truly. The next time she eats an apple, savors its crisp sweet burst of flavor in her mouth, it will not be real. Or will she even experience such a thing as eating in this new reality of hers?_

_But that is surely a small price to pay for living forever, isn't it? Even if "forever" in this instance means inhabiting a digital world with children and houses and trees made up of lines of code._

_River leans down and kisses Charlotte on the forehead. She remembers that the Doctor had children, once, and wonders if he ever tucked them in like this, kissing their foreheads and cheeks, tenderly brushing soft baby hairs away from their faces as they slept. She wonders how often he thinks about his family, and suspects it is far more often than he pretends. She wonders if he was thinking of today when he asked her several months ago which she'd rather have, him or the alternative: children, and a home, and a community, and a "real life", as he sometimes wistfully says._

_River wonders if she'll ever wake up from this nightmare._

"_Sweet dreams, everyone," she murmurs aloud, to no one in particular._

* * *

She cannot believe the audacity of this man, this skinny-floppy beanpole of a man in a corduroy jacket and pants slightly-too-short and a bowtie, of all things. For whatever unthinkable reason, he has positioned himself between River and her quarry, a rogue Judoon cowering at the end of a greasy corridor off the Mamadar space market. Dim lights flicker yellow overhead and a brackish pool of green blood pools on the dirty floor beneath the Judoon, spreading outward and staining the soles of the man's boots, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's too busy standing in River's way.

"If you hit him with that thing, he'll die," the man patiently tries to explain, holding both hands out in front of him in a placating gesture.

River is not placated.

"That's sort of the point," she drawls, and cocks her laser-pistol with a flourish. The man does not move.

"You don't have to do this," the man says.

"Oh, but it's ever so fun," River counters, in a scotch-velvet voice that has sent many a weaker-willed man to his knees.

She gestures lazily with the pistol. "Now move aside, sweetie, or you'll get just as splattered as him."

The man most certainly does not move aside, and instead throws his head back and lets out a frustrated sigh. He says, in a very tired voice, "Oh, the first time you call me 'sweetie'. Of course it has to be in a hostage negotiation. I should have known."

"I won't ask you again," River says, wondering if the fellow is trying to bait her, or if he's just simply mad. (Later, he'll tell her, "Both.")

"And I won't tell you again," the man says, and he looks down at her with a sharp glint in his eye. "Don't do this, River."

River feels one eyebrow quirk high on her forehead. Normally she doesn't like to express surprise, or much of anything else, really (except her natural confidence and bouts of flirtatiousness and the occasional teensiest smidgen of well-earned smugness), but considering that this is the first person who has ever managed to identify her since she wiped all her records clean, she figures he earned that small gesture.

"I'm sorry," she says, in a manner that suggests she is not sorry at all. Her grip on the laser-pistol is still firm, the gun is still firmly pointed at him. "Do I know you? Only I feel like I'd remember someone so daft."

"You don't know me yet, but you will," the man says, taking a slow step forward. "I can't tell you much—spoilers, you see—but this isn't you. You're not like this. You're better than this, River."

He takes a deep breath, and steps forward once again. "Please. You don't have to kill him."

River watches him with a rapidly declining interest. "So that's who you are," she says, almost disappointed. "Just another one of those anti-hunter types. You know, I've encountered more than one of you in my career, but none so persistent as you—and I must say, I am flattered that you've followed my career closely enough to figure out my given name."

"River—" the man warns.

"But I'm going to give you the same spiel I give everyone else," River says, because she has grown impatient of this man-child standing between her and her prey. "Bounty hunters are the vanguards of law and order on the outer rim," she recites. "Since the downfall of the outer galactic police, bounty hunters have been sanctioned to complete official police work for them. This saves the Federation valuable time and money. This bounty has committed heinous crimes against the citizens of the Federation, and his, her, their, or its execution is approved by Federal government. Said crimes include—"

"I know what he did, River," the man says, and his face darkens. "I was there. I saw it."

River laughs. "You were at the great Slaughter of '199?"

She looks him up and down. He can't be older than his late twenties. "You look good for your age," she mocks.

"I'll give you one last chance to stop, River," the man says, and he takes yet another step forward, and it unsettles River that he doesn't even flinch with her laser-pistol still pointing at him, the weapon now mere inches away from his chest. She has the authority to terminate him, but still, she'd rather not—he's so young, it seems a bit of a waste.

"And I'll give you one last chance to move," River says, wishing once again that the corridor weren't so narrow, so she could simply sidestep this fool.

"That's a chance I can't take," the man says sadly, and then, of all the strange things to do in the world, he lunges for her pistol.

River shoots him without hesitation.

The man flies backward, landing in an awkward pile atop the Judoon. Both bodies lie still in the dark corridor. The Judoon must have died on its own, died waiting for judgment it would never receive. All is silent save the echoes of the market nearby and the hum of the laser-pistol charging up for another shot. River switches it off with a sigh.

"Great," she says, stowing the pistol in its holster. "More paperwork."

She snaps a photogram of the two bodies and sends an airwave to the captain of the local precinct with a brief explanation of what transpired here, along with a sonogram of her pulse for the precinct's truth-detection policies. She also collects samples of the bodies' DNA for police records, and sends her current location data for a Collector to come by and dispose of the bodies.

Business as usual.

She feels distantly regretful that the man had to die, but that's the penalty for assaulting a bounty hunter on official business. He should know that; everyone else does.

"Sorry, sweetie," River says sympathetically to the body of the young man. "Better luck next time."

She leaves without a backward glance.

* * *

River doesn't normally do double-takes—it's very rare that things surprise her—but that's exactly what she finds herself doing when she spots that same unruly mop of hair three months later on Gnarlbrax III.

She encounters him in the ruins of an ancient temple, over which tourists are scrambling to get photograms of this fascinating bit of rubble and that charming bit of brick, as if the whole building hasn't been photogrammed to death by everyone else anyway. River's hot on the trail of a mad killer, and it looks like the man that she killed is here for the tourist bit, of all things.

River considers. The DNA scan she performed on his body several months earlier had yielded no results, which was hardly surprising—the Federation is so huge, there are millions of undocumented people running about. And she had frowned a bit when the Collector called her in confusion to ask where the second body was, but she just assumed some body-snatchers had grabbed it after she left, probably to go through his clothes and look for loose change. She didn't spare him another thought after that.

There was no way he could have walked away from that shot, she thinks. No way in bloody hell.

"Sorry, but didn't I kill you?" she asks him without preamble.

"Sorry?" the man says. He turns to face her, and his face has a bit of chocolate on it from the funnel cake he's eating. A wide grin slaps itself on as well.

"River!" he says genially. "How lovely! I was just wondering when I'd get to see you again! Now if you'll hang on just a mo', I'll see if I can track down the Ponds—"

"How are you alive?" River interrupts.

The man stares at her, his face blank. "Blood pumps through my hearts to my various and sundry organs and my respiratory system helpfully supplies oxygen throughout. Charming little things, hearts, sort of make the whole process work, and then there's the bypass for you, always good in a pinch."

He takes another bite of funnel cake. "Why do you ask?" he asks around a mouthful of sweet.

"Don't fuck with me, please," River said. "I'd appreciate a real answer."

The man stops chewing. "That _is_ a real answer," he says. "What's gotten into you? Haven't heard you talk like that in a long—"

His eyes widen. "Oh," he says, as if he's just now realizing something. He thumbs the smudge of chocolate off his face, his nonexistent eyebrows knit together in thought. "Oh," he says again. "This is early for you, isn't it?"

"I killed you," River says, refusing to let herself get bogged down by this man's bizarre verbal detours.

"I see," the man says with a nod. He's taking this surprisingly well.

"I shot you," River tells him, growing more confused by the second. "Don't you remember?"

The man looks uncomfortable. "River—"

"The Judoon?" River prompts. She can't tell who is more mad, this man, or her. He still doesn't seem to recognize anything she's saying. "You tried to protect him, and I shot you?" she says.

"Ah," the man says, dropping his funnel cake with a great _splat_ so he can clamp his hands over his ears. "I shouldn't be hearing any of this! You can't just spring things like that on me, River! You've already told me too much, you'll mess with the whole thing! And oh, look—"

He gestures to the chocolatey, doughy mess that has splattered on the ground. "You made me drop my treat!"

He walks right up to her and sticks a finger in her face. "You owe me a new one," he says, like an angry, petulant child.

River raises an eyebrow at him. "You're more upset about your dessert than the fact that I killed you?"

The man adjusts his jacket. "I'm sure you had your reasons," he says.

River feels the ghost of a smile starting across her face.

"You're a bit mad, aren't you?" she asks.

"Mad man with a box," the man says. "The maddest man there ever was, is, or will be."

He shoots her a smile of his own, and his hand juts out forward in a manner that suggests he expects River to shake it.

"Nice to meet you, River," he says. "I'm the Doctor."

* * *

-End Part 1-


	2. Part 2

River encounters the Doctor several times over the course of the next two years.

She sees him in passing in a jungle on Rathfarr, as the capital is attacked by its angry neighboring planet (something about trade disputes, dreadfully boring stuff, River can't be bothered with it). River considers going back for the Doctor before fleeing, but self-preservation gets the better of her and she decides to leave the planet while she still can.

Later, she is pleasantly surprised to find that not only did the planet _not_ implode, but the Doctor lived—in fact, he spearheaded the entire planet's survival campaign. She doesn't know why, but that makes her smile a bit.

Some time later, she spots him onboard a prison ship when she delivers her latest bounty. He's inside one of the cells, and he slaps his thigh and says something about old times and irony and role reversal, but he won't tell her anything more, and she thinks about letting him rot in there.

She somehow finds herself helping him anyway.

River dons a bit of her trusty old lipstick and introduces one of the guards to the nicest way he'll ever lose consciousness. "Classic," the Doctor says with a wink when she opens his cell door.

She finds him in a museum outside Neptune, where he and a tall leggy redhead named Amy are attempting to end the exploits of a Chameleonoid who has apparently developed a taste for museum guards. She herself is looking for the Chameleonoid, so she figures she might as well help them track it down; it has been disguising itself as random bits of museum exhibits, which makes the job a tad difficult, but the Doctor modifies her bioscanner with a bizarre green-lit instrument that looks like it belongs in a gynecologist's office and together they discover the Chameleonoid in the twenty-third century wing, pretending to be a wax statue of Beyoncé XVI.

River is pleased at a case that's solved so quickly. She is less pleased when the Doctor and Amy abscond with the Chameleonoid before she can take it in, or execute it.

It's all right. She could easily follow after the Doctor if she wanted, but she figures she might as well let him have this one—it's the least she can do after she killed him, even if he doesn't remember.

He's reluctant to reveal very much about himself; he doesn't really say anything beside his name, or his title, or whatever it is. River presses him for details sometimes and he never gives her any. "It's not time," he says with a wink, and she finds that infuriating.

One day, when the Doctor saves River from a pit of Cessnakes in a Thramish swamp, River can't help but notice that Amy is gone and a new young woman is in her place. She's a perky little brunette named Clara, a sweet young thing whose fashion choices are adorable but, for this lifestyle, a bit questionable—River sort of fears for the safety of her ankles in the shoes she insists on wearing. River wonders at the Doctor and his revolving door of female companions, jokes that she should start jotting down notes in a journal just to keep track of them all.

The next time she sees the Doctor, in the neon paradise gardens of Hirv Ger, he presents her with a small blue leather book for just that very purpose.

"Shouldn't it be a little black book?" she teases.

The Doctor twists his mouth in confusion. "No, it's always been blue," he tells her. "For reasons."

He doesn't remember River's joke about his roster of companions. In fact, he doesn't seem to remember anything about the Cessnakes or Thram. That's when River starts jotting down their adventures together in the blue book, writing them down and dating them, sometimes saving snippets of items to commemorate the day—a ticket stub, a leaf, a paper clipping on planets where they still have paper—partially to show the Doctor and see what he does and doesn't remember, partially to make sure she herself isn't going stark-raving bonkers.

Sometimes he remembers what she points out to him. Other times he stares at her for a moment, his eyes hard and blank, before he whips off on some tangent about the taste of prunes from a planet whose name River can't pronounce ("_So_ much better than other prunes, River! But with much the same qualities, so, speaking from experience, don't eat too many of them!").

River almost worries about his mental faculties, almost worries about the safety of this man and his companions if his memory is really so bad as this, but he just seems so conscious, so cogent, so batty but _brilliant_. It isn't until they run into each other (while they're both running away from an angry army of insurgents on Sempar Moon) that she begins to realize precisely why his memory is so spotty.

"You're a time-traveler," she realizes, even though she feels silly saying the words aloud, even as small explosions erupt in the orange earth all around them.

"You're catching on quickly," the Doctor says with a grin, fiddling with the sonic and a handheld communications device. He's trying to shut down the army's intranet comm network, and the sonic _is not helping_. "Most people never figure it out if I don't invite them inside the box."

"That sounds like you're going to lure them in with candy," River points out. "Are you a bad man, Doctor?"

An explosion splinters the barricade in front of them and sprays them both with dust and tiny orange-and-pyrite rocks from the planet surface, which River just knows she will have to pick out of her hair later, and she's starting to regret taking this job to hunt down a war criminal—aren't they typically arrested _after_ the war is over?

"I'm not a bad man," she hears the Doctor say, and she watches him as he scans the area for a way out that doesn't involve death-by-shrapnel. "But I've done my fair share of bad things. More than."

"In that case, I should stop feeling bad for killing you," River replies.

"River, please," the Doctor says in a world-weary voice. "You just brilliantly figured out that I'm a time-traveler, and now you're going to bung it all up by giving me these spoilers all the time. You can't do that, you know. I don't want to know what's going to happen to me any more than you want to know what happens in the eighth Harry Potter before reading it."

River rolls her eyes. "There's only seven Harry Potters, you ninny."

The Doctor shoots a sly smile her way. "There's only seven Harry Potters right now, you mean."

River just stares at him and laughs. "Impossible man," she says.

"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he replies.

* * *

One day, he invites her inside the box.

She accidentally-on-purpose encounters him on a space station outside Cadmium Prime—she heard over her police scanner that a small group of space-pirates rebelled against their captain, and are wreaking havoc amongst the peaceful populace, and that, River thinks, sounded like exactly the sort of thing that the Doctor would show up for.

She's right, of course.

At the end of a daring escapade involving a quantum cannon, an extradimensional rift, and a rubber band, as the semi-cyborg space-pirates turn their electronic gazes their way, and River's blood thrills with the excitement of an impending chase, the Doctor looks at her, grabs her hand, and says one word:

"Run."

He takes off and pulls her with him, his long legs and booted feet pumping madly against the cold metal floor, and River laughs, running alongside him, unable to think of the last time—or indeed, any time—someone made her feel this giddy.

"In here," he says, and they've stopped outside a blue wooden box. It's perhaps big enough for two, maybe three people to fit in, with the word "Police" stamped across the top.

They're being chased by a horde of mad, murderous space-pirates, and the Doctor wants her to squeeze into a flimsy wooden box.

River arches an eyebrow at the box. She looks at the Doctor. She looks at the space-pirates closing in on them. She looks back at him.

He's watching her through heavy-lidded eyes, a sly smile hovering on his open mouth.

He's daring her to go inside. Daring her to trust him.

Well. River has never been one to turn down a good dare.

She pushes the doors open, and for the second time since she met the Doctor, she finds herself surprised.

This little box is significantly bigger on the inside.

"Oh," she says, her eyes traveling over the golden walls, the bright lights, the glass column in the center of the console. The chamber is unbelievably huge and looks like some kind of strange underwater vessel, its walls half coral, half yellow submarine. It even has strange round things in the walls, odd little windows that peer out to nowhere. River turns about in her place and sees doors that open up to even more places, more corridors or rooms or maybe chambers like this—she doesn't know, but she would like to find out. She has seen extradimensional technology before, but nothing like this.

Who in the universe would have technology like this?

"What do you think?" the Doctor asks, leaning back against the doors. River can hear the space-pirates battering against the outside of the box, but the Doctor doesn't seem to notice them, much less worry about them. He's the very image of casual, both arms crossed over his chest, one foot swaying lazily, his head cocked to the side as he awaits River's response.

"I think…"

River's words escape her as she ascends the grated stairs, approaches the console. She skims her fingers along the edge of the controls, her fingertips ghosting over a mess of buttons, levers, keys, switches. She looks up at the display screens, curious, and sees a series of circles where proper letters should be.

This box, this ship, this technological marvel, is one of the most beautiful things River has ever seen, and right now, she hates the Doctor for sharing it with her.

"I think I murdered you," she says, her hand falling to her side.

She turns around to find the Doctor looking very confused.

"What?"

"Earlier in my timesteam," she says, walking down the stairs, "Later in yours. In a space market outside—"

The Doctor runs up to her, clamps his hand over her mouth.

"Stop," he urges. "You can't be telling me this. You should know better!"

River steps back, freeing her mouth. "No, I won't stop! I'm trying to save you!"

"I know, and in a very distant way, I appreciate that, but there's something you don't understand—"

River ducks around him and runs out the door.

She runs past the space-pirates, who seem surprised by her sudden emergence (indeed, too surprised to follow after her until it's much too late). She runs past the town square, where the inhabitants of the space station cheer her on as she goes, remembering the big-haired woman and the floppy beanpole of a man as their saviors. She runs all the way to her ship and she doesn't stop running until she reaches it, the air burning in her lungs, her thoughts swimming about in her brain.

It has occurred to her that, in a lifetime of being disappointed by people, the Doctor might be one of the few good creatures out there. And she destroyed him.

But she can make it better.

River clambers inside her ship and sets her coordinates for the Time Academy.


	3. Part 3

Braxis Crane is tall, tan, well-muscled, thick-haired, certainly far too charming for a Time Agent, and none too happy to be "babysitting", as he says, when he finds out that his newest partner is going to be some rookie from the outer rim. But his face breaks apart into a wide grin when he sees the cadet for the first time, her hair wild and her curves well-flaunted in a snug uniform, and that's the last time he uses the word "babysitting" when referring to River Song.

River lets him take the lead on their first few missions as a team. What's the harm? She has already patiently waited for several months, zipping through her training fast enough to give the instructors whiplash. She'll be a full-fledged agent soon, and then she can achieve her goal all on her own.

Then it's good-bye, Time Agency. Good-bye, Mr. Braxis Crane; good-bye, handsome Time Agent with the smug grin and the knowing swagger and the mischievous glint in his eye and the tendency to bring home all sorts of people for all sorts of exciting activities.

Hello, absolution.

The Time Agency, at least this branch of it, is dedicated to repairing holes and rifts in time caused by other less discerning quantum travelers, and even though it isn't her end goal, River is happy, in a way, to be part of the cause. She and Crane dance along timelines, jumping back and forth to repair time-damage and nudge events in seventeenth-century Sweden, on fortieth-century Saturn, and in a nexus of gas that will be a star someday, back in about 11 billion BCE. They fix a troublesome rift in twenty-second century Cardiff and give Attila the Hun the nosebleed of his life. Sometimes she and Crane are joined by other Time Agents—a pretty boy named Jack Harkness is among their regular teammates—sometimes the three or four or five of them save a small galaxy, and sometimes they all just enjoy a pint together at whatever passes for a local pub. And River experiences, for the first time in her entire existence, the joy of being part of a partnership, part of a team.

She blinks and three years pass, and maybe she has enjoyed her newfound work family a little more than she should have. But River likes Crane a lot. And Crane quite likes River. They work really well together.

They excel at other mutual activities too, and sometimes, Jack Harkness excels with them.

Thus, River is in no way surprised when she steals their ship and Crane's vortex manipulator and makes a jump to a space market in 50th-century Mamadar, just a few years prior, only to find Crane waiting for her, leaning against a building, arms crossed and fingers drumming.

She stares at Crane. He shrugs.

"I couldn't let you know," River says, the closest thing to an apology that she will allow herself to say. "It's dangerous. Personal timeline stuff. If the Agency found out, it would be the end for both of us."

"And that's how you justified stealing my stuff?" Crane asks.

"Pretty much."

Crane sighs. He pushes off the wall. "Well, come on, then. Let's get it over with, whatever it is."

"And where do you think you're going?"

"With you," Crane replies. "What, you think I'm gonna just let you run away with my ship?" he asks when River's eyebrow shoots upward in surprise. "Not a chance. I've gotta keep an eye on my investment. Besides," and here he scratches the back of his neck more than a little awkwardly, "we're partners, aren't we?"

River grins. "All right then, partner. Shall we?"

Crane holds out his arm and she takes it. "Let's go destroy a timeline," he says.

* * *

It's quite a surreal thing, River thinks, watching oneself from the outside. She's never really seen her own backside before. But it's rather a nice bum, as she expected.

From a safe hiding spot, she watches herself disappear down the alleyway, her trusty old pistol in hand, following after a dying Judoon. Its dark blood splatters the dirty grey walls around it. Its labored breathing sounds just as awful as she remembers. She watches as the Doctor runs after her, long legs pumping madly, jacket and hair flapping in the breeze. He plans to insinuate himself between her and her prey.

He plans to stop her. (He plans to try.)

It's going to happen soon.

"All right," she says quietly to Crane. "This is going to be tricky, but I think we can make it work. See, they never did find a body, so for all we know, no one ever died to begin with." She pulls an instrument out of her bag, a clunky hand-held item that flashes a dull green in the shadows. "So I'm going to sneak up behind myself and use the retro-scan—"

She thinks she can pinpoint the exact moment that the cogs in Crane's head start turning backwards. "Wait, what's this about a body?" he asks. "And a memory mod? What exactly are we doing here?"

"We're going to stop a murderer," River tells him.

"Okay. Who's the murderer?"

River stalls for time, checks the settings on the retro-scan to make sure they won't liquefy her brain.

"Me," she says simply.

Crane's mouth falls open in surprise. He's not surprised to learn that she's killed people, River knows—they've both done that. It's sort of inevitable, their line of work. But it usually only happens when the job calls for it. Besides, almost any mistakes can be pretty easily rectified with another well-placed time-jump. River highly doubts that Crane has ever killed anyone outside of his work with the Time Agency.

River has killed several people. But she only feels bad about one of them.

"Are you still with me?" she asks Crane.

He closes his mouth. He nods. "Always."

River readies the retro-scan, setting it to muddy her memories of this day, and prepares to shoot her younger self with it. At least, until she hears—

"River."

In the space of a second, she has spun around and so has Crane, both of them with their firearms raised in the air. An older gentleman stands in front of them, a thin fellow with pale eyes and a shock of white hair. River can't help but think that he's dressed sort of like a magician. The fellow raises his hands, showing that they're empty.

"You have to let this happen," the man explains. His voice is accented in a soft burr, something River vaguely recognizes as old-earth Scottish. "It's a fixed point. I'm sorry."

"Get of my way!" River demands, dismantling the safety on her pistol.

The man sighs and shakes his head. "Oh my, this is a familiar bit, isn't it? Only don't shoot me this time, please—that's not really the sort of symmetry I appreciate."

River's brow furrows in confusion. She shouldn't let him talk. She should just put him down. The Agency could show up and put a halt to her mission at any moment. But she finds her finger hesitating on the trigger.

"We don't have time for this," Crane mutters, echoing River's thoughts aloud, and he prepares to strike.

"Who the hell are you?" River asks the stranger.

The man licks his lips, steels himself, like he knows River won't believe him. "I'm the Doctor."

River blinks a few times.

"The Doctor," Crane says quietly beside her, and she feels him tense, and she wonders about that.

Her brain races. It occurs to her that the stranger could be lying, he could just be some random stranger, but what would someone possibly have to gain from a lie like this?

"So I don't shoot you," she says, working it out in her head. "I must not, because you've got old—"

"Thanks," the Doctor says sarcastically.

"—but then where's the accent from?"

"That's a very good question, actually, I'm not sure myself. There may be a north on Gallifrey, but there isn't exactly a Scotland. But listen, River…"

He steps forward, tentatively, and puts his hands on her shoulders. Her arms have relaxed and the pistol now points to the ground. She wonders if she's going mad, that she's letting some strange man get close to her like this. But he just seems so familiar.

"You do shoot me," he tells her, his eyes wide as they search hers. "You have to. All right?"

"But you don't die," she reasons. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here right now."

The Doctor shakes his head. "I do die," he tells her, and her heart plummets to new depths she hadn't even imagined possible before. "I do die, but it's all right," he rushes, panicking as he watches the blood drain from her face. "It's not—"

River doesn't let him finish. She plows right on past him, away from Crane, toward her younger self and the younger Doctor.

"River!" the Doctor hisses after her, but she does not stop.

Her boots clatter loudly against the metal-tiled space station floor as she runs. She checks and double-checks her retro-scan, ensuring it won't turn her brain into pudding. She catches sight of her younger self at the end of the alleyway, watches as she prepares to shoot the Doctor, and aims her own weapon at her back.

"Right, sorry about this," she hears the Doctor grumble behind her, and she feels something cold at her temples, and that's the last thing she knows before she loses consciousness.

* * *

River wakes up in an unfamiliar bed and a foul mood.

She hears the sounds of someone bustling about, and opens her eyes to see the inside of something that could almost pass for a hotel room, were the walls not smattered with metal struts and something that looks like coral. The pinkish-gold tendrils cut through the bland grey hotel wallpaper and connect up at the ceiling, interrupting the white-popcorn stuff there. She sits up in the bed, stiff hotel bedclothes rustling beneath her, and she's surprised to find she is neither nauseous nor sore-headed—when she's been drugged unconscious in the past, it's had some nasty side effects.

_Drugged unconscious_. She remembers the events of the last few hours and feels her blood begin to boil.

The Doctor's head pops in the doorway. "Erm, good morning," he says. "Relatively speaking."

River says nothing at all, just sits and glares and lets the anger simmer in her veins.

The Doctor bounces on the balls of his feet, nervous; his hands fidget at his sides. "Now, before you start with the shouting—"

"How fucking dare you," River says quietly, her voice trembling with barely contained rage.

"Oh, River, really. You're above that sort of language, aren't you?"

"How FUCKING dare you!" River shouts, pushing herself off the bed. She stomps up to the Doctor and he backpedals rapidly, backing up against a wall. She stands with her face in his and knows she'll probably get spit on him but finds she really doesn't care. He watches her with defensive curled-up hands and big eyes and eyebrows shooting off his forehead.

"Three years!" she shouts. "You've wasted three years of my life! Three fucking years, all of them spent trying to save you!"

"Yes, this is exactly what I didn't want," he says, rolling his eyes. "The shouting."

River smacks him.

His hand flies up to his cheek and his eyes grow even bigger, if that's possible. River's chest heaves up and down, her arms tense, her hand stinging. A pinkish hand-shaped welt starts to form on the Doctor's cheek beneath his fingertips. He looks at River like she's a stranger.

Tears start to well up in River's eyes, and she can't remember the last time that happened. "How could you let me do it?" she asks. She refuses to let the tears fall and they glimmer in her eyes and cloud her vision instead. "How could you let me kill you?"

"I told you. Fixed. Point," he says sharply, punctuating his words with painful over-enunciation. "You work for the Time Agency, you should know what that means. And you should be smart enough to know what a fixed point looks like when you see it. So really, I don't understand how _I'm_ the one on trial here."

River really wants to smack him again. She crosses her arms and traps her hands against her body to quell the urge. "Tell me what's happening," she says. "And no technobabble or fancy words to make me feel stupid," she says when he opens his mouth. "And no bandying about. Just tell it to me simple. Like you should have done all along."

His face drops at that. "Right," he says. "Good point. Suppose I've gotten a little unused to sharing things with people. This self is pretty tight-lipped, even for me."

River quirks an eyebrow at that. _This self_?

"And that's the big thing right there, really," the Doctor explains. "You do shoot me, and yes, in a way, you kill me, and in a way, I die. But I also regenerate." He takes in a deep breath. "I'm a Time Lord, River."

She searches her mental database to see if the phrase 'Time Lord' returns any results. It doesn't. She shrugs.

The Doctor sighs. "I'm not human. I'm from the planet Gallifrey. I'm a Time Lord. I regenerate. I'm about a thousand years old, give or take a decade. That's really all you need to know. About as simple as it gets."

River steps back, giving them both some space. She looks the Doctor up and down. He watches her as she looks.

"So you're a different man, but you're…still sort of the same?" she asks.

"Different body, different personality, same memories."

"And your regenerations are fixed points?"

The Doctor nods.

River exhales. She tries not to think of the damage she could have caused if she had been successful in her endeavor. The Time Agency would have been the least of her worries. "I'm an idiot," she says, wandering back over to the bed. She sits down on it, hard.

The Doctor scratches the back of his head awkwardly, a gesture River recognizes from his younger days. "Well, yes," he admits, and he joins her on the bed. "But, in fairness, I probably should have told you a long time ago. Would have spared a lot of this trouble. But…I don't know."

He tenderly touches his face where she slapped him. River winces. He'll wear that handprint for a little while. "It was sort of nice, pretending," he says.

"Pretending?"

"That I was something I'm not. Before you knew. Knowing just leads to questions that want more knowing. You know?"

River chuckles. "Impossible man."

"Yes," he nods. "The same impossible man."

"Just different packaging," she says. She looks him over again. "Sort of older, more wrinkly packaging."

"Excuse me, but in some cultures the oldest of the species are regarded as the sexi—"

River interrupts him with a kiss on the cheek, a gentle ghosting of her lips over her fading handprint. He falters and stops talking, and, if she didn't know him any better, she'd insist he's blushing.

"I'm sorry I hit you," she says quietly.

"No, you're not," he sighs. "But it's all right. I'm a bad man, remember?"

River smiles.

The two of them jump at the sounds of something thumping in the next room. River shoots the Doctor a curious look.

"Ah, yes," he says, glancing away. "That."

In a moment, he's led her over to the wardrobe, and he pulls the heavy wooden doors open to reveal Crane. Crane has been thrashing about a bit, judging by the overturned boxes and the mess of boots and Chucks spilling about the place. He's also gagged and bound hand and foot and glaring at the Doctor with murder in his eyes.

"I might have used my telepathy to knock out you and your furry little friend," the Doctor explains to River, tilting his head as he watches Crane struggle on the floor. "Don't know why, but I don't like him very much."

River just shakes her head and tries not laugh.


End file.
